Featured Apple / FBI Legal Battle

SO - the latest is that the FBI, at the last minute, requested a motion to cancel the hearing on Tuesday; the judge approved the motion. The FBI says it's because they've been approached by a third party who says they can hack the phone.

Mixed reactions. Some folks think this means Apple's won; but the FBI only requested a cancellation of this hearing. The lawsuit hasn't been dropped. Electronic security experts are a little disappointed, because they know this subject is going to come up again, and were hoping to get some resolution through the legal system now.

Further, if it's true that another party can hack the phone, that casts a shadow on Apple's products not being as secure as they've led everyone to believe. However, it'll be about two weeks before the FBI can confirm that this works.

Another aspect to consider is, now that someone else has volunteered to hack the phone and the FBI has accepted - what does that say about the FBI's case against Apple? Some take it to mean that Apple cares about its customers, while the FBI gave a prime example of the government not wanting individuals to have privacy. That the FBI is about to "let Apple off the hook" because they can hack the phone through a voluntary third party seems to strengthen the concept that the FBI was merely using the legal system to strong-arm Apple.

This battle about privacy is far from over, as evidenced by responses to the attack in Belgium yesterday. From TechDirt:

Our innate ignorance of technology, especially at the policy-maker level, is depressing.

 

The search warrant to examine the contents of the phone was never in question. The legality of the FBI to hack the phone was never in question. The court order to compel the product maker to hack their own product and thus introduce a vulnerability into their own product, was the point of contention about this whole situation.

Any court order to compel someone to do something is an example of "strong arm." So yeah, I'm speculating.